Saturday, January 23, 2010

Gearing Up Your Fresh Level 80 Resto Druid

And Tivonicus the Druid becomes 80 number 4.

That gives me a Level 80 of every Tanking class save the Death Knight, although my Warrior has been retired for a while. I don't plan on making the Druid a Tank as I prefer Resto on him. His second spec will be Feral or Boomkin. It's Feral right now because that made it easier for leveling and soloing. I'll probably keep him Feral for farming Leather.

My first order of business after training his Level 80 spells was to fix his Glyphs. All through leveling I had been using a Glyph of Healing Touch, but now that I could train Nourish, I switched over to Glyphs of Nourish, Swiftmend, and Rapid Rejuvenation. My minors will be Unburdened Rebirth, Glyph of the Wild and ?

I knew my Druid wasn't ready for Heroics right away, but I wanted him to get there as quick as I could. But I didn't want to be carried either by guildies or strangers in LFD. Of course, you can't buy full T9 the moment you ding. So I had to do the best I could with what I had. Healers and Tanks are more on the spot than DPS in a 5 man. There won't be another Healer around to make up for my deficiencies.

I had a plan in mind which I executed that involved my whole team. From doing the Daily Random Normal while Leveling, Tiv had 30 Emblems of Triumph on him when he dinged. Step 1 was to purchase an Idol of Flaring Growth.

Now it was time for my Banker alt to get into the act. He hit up the Auction House and picked up a Reanimator's Cloak and Dragon Prow Amulet plus all the mats I'd need for enchanting. He picked up some raw gems which were then sent over to Honorshammer, cut and sent to Tivonicus.

By the time it was all said and done Tiv was sitting at 1145 spell power, 14kmana, and 600 spirit.

The plan now is to run Normal Trial of the Champion, and the easier Heroics to start getting some better gear. I hope to move up to running Normal Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection. Then I can start running the daily random Heroic. That's the biggest reason I pushed this guy to 80. The other being that I really enjoyed the Resto Druid healing style.

I need him running the daily random as soon as I can so he can be a second toon to grab Emblems of Frost to buy Primordial Saronite for Honorshammer's crafting needs.

Now I am officially done with leveling any more alts until Cataclysm. Once Cataclysm hits I want to level up a Goblin. I'm leaning towards Shaman, but might do a Priest.

4 comments:

Just a tip, especially on a fresh 80 you likely won't have enough haste to make the Rapid Rejuve glyph worth it. I'd suggest grabbing perhaps the Regrowth or Wild Growth glyphs, or Innervate if you find yourself having mana troubles =)

As far as minors go, Unburdened Rebirth is a must. Other standard options are Wild, Dash, or Thorns, all useful in their own ways.

Gear situation sounds very similar to my Druid (Balance / Resto).Ironically he was my best geared toon at the end of TBC and is now my worst geared 80 (out of 5) I am currently only running him as Balance as I just can't get into Druid healing. Shammy, Pally, Priest OK; drood not so much :(

Farming regular ToC, FoS, and PoS is probably not a bad idea, although the LFD function will limit your "random" choces based on your gear ;)

Myself I still have 2 more alts to get to 80 (75 and a 71) but it is hard with trying to rotate 5 toons per day though at least 1 random heroic. Good thing I don't raid, lol!

Thank you for the post as it confimred that at least someone else read the same info I had in gearing up a resto druid when they hit 80.

I agree w/ Khi about the 3rd glyph - unless you're stacking a lot of haste, you could do better with regrowth or rejuv glyphs for now. Once you get a lot of haste, rapid rejuv is awesome. (WG is only useful in 10's or 25's, and as a new-new druid you won't be healing those.)

I've been gearing up my fairly new level 80 resto druid as well. I used my first 25 triumph badges on the Idol, which boosts your rejuv spellpower. From there, I am going for 4 pieces of tier 9 with the 75 badge helm as the off piece because of the haste on it.

I found I could heal most heroics as a fresh 80, depending on the tank. Normal forge and pit aren't bad at all, and even Halls on normal isn't much trouble for a druid. Heroic halls is where I've had some trouble, but have successfully healed it now with my current gear. Good luck!